O.C. POP BEAT : Hatfield Finally Sees Tide Turn : The reincarnation of “Unchained Melody” represents an upswing for the Orange County-based Righteous Brother after a long streak of bad luck and personal sadness.

Thanks to the success of “Ghost,” the summer’s biggest hit film, millions of people are becoming acquainted, or reacquainted, as the case may be, with the sound of Bobby Hatfield’s sweet tenor soaring through “Unchained Melody.”

Twenty-five years after it hit No. 4 on the Billboard pop chart, the Righteous Brothers’ original 1965 recording of the haunting tune--actually a solo vehicle for Hatfield--turned up as the movie’s love theme.

Consequently, “Unchained Melody” has enjoyed a commercial reincarnation: it’s No. 24 and still climbing on the latest Billboard Hot 100 chart; it’s also spurring strong sales not only for the “Ghost” soundtrack album, but for “The Righteous Brothers Greatest Hits,” a collection first released in 1967 that’s back on the chart at No. 20 and rising.

It all has come as a “mind-boggling” surprise, says Hatfield, who spent the past few years watching from relative obscurity while his partner in the Righteous Brothers, Bill Medley, rode back into prominence on the strength of another movie-driven pop phenomenon--the “Dirty Dancing” love theme, “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.”

The revival of “Unchained Melody” has added a note of suspense to Righteous Brothers shows these days, Hatfield said over the phone last week from Hawaii, where he and Medley were playing a series of dates at resort hotels. Now that the song is a hit again, audiences come in wondering whether Hatfield, at 50, can still scale the melodic peaks he reached so smoothly when he first recorded it at 24.

“I’m comfortable with the song, but I think a lot of the audience is waiting till the end of it, thinking, ‘I wonder if this old guy’s gonna hit the high notes?’ ” said Hatfield, an affable, humorous conversationalist. When Hatfield shows that he is still up to it, “the reaction is wonderful. It’s like they’re pulling for the old boys of rock ‘n’ roll.”

It’s not hard to root for Hatfield, who first teamed with the tall, bass-singing Medley in 1962 to form what became the most famous pop act ever to come out of Orange County. The success of “Unchained Melody” represents an upswing after a long streak of bad luck and personal sadness. Hatfield said he didn’t want to appear to be begging sympathy as he recalled some of his hard times: “It’s life, and you deal with it the best you can.”

Among the things Hatfield has had to deal with were the deaths of his parents in 1983 and 1984, and of his younger brother, John, who he said died of AIDS at 47 in April. Hatfield’s wife, Linda, has fought illness over much of that period, too, most recently suffering from spinal disease. “She’s just now getting to the point where she can ride a bike and exercise. That’s a real nice thing to have behind us.”

Then there was the blow--in the most literal sense--that Hatfield suffered as he walked to his car on Sept. 19, 1988, after performing at the Hop, the nightclub he and Medley own in Fountain Valley.

“Some guy . . . knocked out my teeth and broke every bone that could be broken in a man’s face,” Hatfield recalled, somehow keeping a note of levity in his voice. “At that point, I said, ‘I’m not even worried if I ever sing again. I just want to be with my family and be well again.’ It was a nightmare that I would just as soon forget.”

Hatfield paused and laughed. “It sounds like I should be on ‘Queen for a Day,’ ” he said, in reference to the old television show that revolved around contestants’ hard-luck stories. “Perhaps it’s about time something nice happened to the little Righteous Brother.”

The seeds of Hatfield’s unexpected new good fortune with “Unchained Melody” were sown a quarter of a century ago when he and Medley both were assigned to come up with solo tracks to serve as filler for a Righteous Brothers album. At the time, 1965, the duo was one of the hottest pop acts, having already scored a No. 1 hit with “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.”

Hatfield picked “Unchained Melody,” a 1955 oldie that “had always been one of my favorites.” While Phil Spector is listed as the song’s producer, Hatfield credits Medley, who doesn’t sing on “Unchained Melody,” with overseeing the recording session.

“Phil wanted to produce hit singles, and when it came to the album (tracks), he didn’t spend much time with us, especially on the solo songs,” Hatfield said. The relatively sparse “Unchained Melody” was released as the B-side of “Hung on You,” an up-tempo number on which Spector lavished one of his full-bore, wall-of-sound productions.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a hit,” Hatfield said, but disc jockeys who flipped the disc over started playing the B-side. As he recalls it, Spector wasn’t pleased that “Unchained Melody” had brushed aside “Hung on You” as the new Righteous Brothers hit, one of five Top 10 singles they scored between early 1965 and mid-1966.

“In fact, Phil Spector tried to stop it” from being played, Hatfield said. “He had his people make several phone calls, but it just got away from him.”

A few years later, the fruits of “Unchained Melody,” and the rest of the Righteous Brothers’ ‘60s hits, got away from Hatfield and Medley. The duo found itself in a dispute over overdue royalties with its label, MGM Records, Hatfield said. Rather than protract the issue, he said, the Righteous Brothers agreed to take a cash settlement on the spot while signing away any future royalty rights.

“Us being a couple of rocket scientists, we figured ‘That’s no problem--20 years later, what difference is it going to make?’ ” Hatfield recalled. Consequently, he said, he and Medley haven’t made any money from the renewed spurt of sales for “Unchained Medley” and their “Greatest Hits” album. But interest in the song, like Medley’s “Dirty Dancing” duet with Jennifer Warnes, translates into more interest in the Righteous Brothers’ live shows (after a recent three-week swing in the Northeast, and the shows in Hawaii, Hatfield and Medley return to Orange County for one of their monthly shows at the Hop--this one, on Sept. 23, a celebration of the club’s sixth anniversary, and the two singers’ recent 50th birthdays).

“We’re in the position everyone wants to get to eventually,” Hatfield said. “We work when we want to, and that’s nice. If my family wouldn’t mind moving into a room at the YMCA, I’d probably never have to work again.” Most likely, Hatfield will keep working when he wants to, so that he and his wife can go on living in Newport Beach with daughter Vallyn, who is 8, and son Dustin, 7. Hatfield also has two sons from a previous marriage--Bobby Jr., 23, and Kalin, 20.

Hatfield speaks of another marriage: a professional one with Medley that has had its intermittent periods of union and separation, and now appears to be on a good, stable footing as the partners move through their middle age.

The vocal teaming dates to 1962, when Medley, from Santa Ana, needed a high tenor voice to fill in on a recording session for one of the regular members of his band, the Paramours. He called on Hatfield, who at the time fronted his own group, the Variations. The combination worked, and Hatfield and Medley began forging a career together as two suburban white guys, singing soul music in harmony. For a while, Hatfield remained a physical education major at Cal State Long Beach, aiming to become a coach if he couldn’t realize his dream of playing second base in the major leagues. But his sporting ambitions soon gave way to musical ones after the Righteous Brothers’ debut single, “Little Latin Lupe Lu,” became a hit.

“Our original goal was just to put together a band that was good enough to get out of Orange County and become one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands playing a lounge in Las Vegas,” Hatfield said.

After peaking with their streak of hits in 1965-66, the Righteous Brothers split in 1968. They regrouped in 1974, when they had a No. 3 hit with “Rock and Roll Heaven,” then separated again before resuming a steady partnership since 1982. While Medley has maintained a parallel solo career, little was heard from Hatfield outside the Righteous Brothers.

“I guess I’m just not a real gung-ho show-biz-type person,” he said. “I much prefer standing over in the shadows to being in the center of (attention). Probably one of my biggest faults is not having the push that I should have.”

When Medley’s “Dirty Dancing” break landed him a Grammy, an Oscar, a solo recording deal and a national tour, Hatfield said, “I was happy for his success. I wasn’t jealous, but I was envious of the fact he had a No. 1 record.” Hatfield said he found himself wishing that he also had a vehicle for some solo recognition.

All it took was for Patrick Swayze, the leading man in both “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost,” to make another hit film. Hatfield said he had no advance warning that “Unchained Melody” was going to be a movie theme. “My wife and I were watching TV, and I saw a 15-second trailer. It had an instrumental version of “Unchained Melody,” and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if they used my version?’ ” Hatfield found out the whole truth when he went to see “Ghost” on its opening day in Orange County.

Now the pace is picking up for him. He recently cut a new “Unchained Medley,” a note-for-note replica that has just been released as a single by Curb Records. The idea behind the replica is to offer radio stations and record buyers a single version of a song that currently is only available on album, and also to make available an “Unchained Melody” that benefits from state-of-the-art studio technology.

“I recorded it in the same key, C, (as the original version),” Hatfield said. “My voice is a little huskier, naturally, after 25 years, but I can hit all the notes. I just have to squeeze myself a little harder.”

Hatfield and Medley also recently recorded updated versions of several of their other old hits, including “Ebb Tide” and “Little Latin Lupe Lu,” for inclusion on an upcoming Curb album entitled “Unchained Melody: The Best of the Righteous Brothers.” That record will add to a growing boom market in Righteous Brothers hits collections: Also available are the single-volume Verve “Best Of” dating from 1967, and “Anthology (1962-1974),” a double-album, 32-song compilation that Rhino Records put out last year. Also on the way is a new Bill Medley solo album from Curb, due out early next year. A new Medley single, “Don’t You Love Me Anymore?,” has just been released.

Then there’s the session Hatfield sang on last week in Los Angeles. “I did this record the other day with Bruce Springsteen,” he said. “He got in touch with me long before ‘Ghost.’ He was apparently listening to some old Righteous Brothers albums, and he had some songs he thought I would be right for.” Hatfield said he cut one track with Springsteen, a song whose title Hatfield couldn’t recall. “His voice was already on it. I just had to do my harmony on the chorus and the tag.”

Hatfield said he doesn’t know for certain that the track will make it onto Springsteen’s next album. “He’s recording songs all the time. But it was just an honor for me to go in and do it. It was a nice little feather in the cap. (Springsteen) is a prince, real laid back, the kind of guy everybody would like to have as a next-door neighbor. No ego. I’d like to have it so we could sit around and drink beer and watch football together on Sundays.”

Beyond that, Hatfield said, he has either selected or already recorded enough material for an album of his own--if the new attention from “Unchained Melody” should land him a hoped-for solo recording deal.

“Hopefully I’ll be in the studio, waiting for all these multimillion-dollar contracts to come in,” he said with a laugh.

The Righteous Brothers will sing Sept. 23 at their combination 50th Birthday Bash and Hop Sixth Anniversary Party, at the Hop, 18774 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley. Tickets: $10, available only at the door. Doors open at 5 p.m. Information: (714) 963-2366.